Gith (2 page)

'I was talking to Hemi. That was official police business!'

'Poof!'

'Christ, you're a bloody tough boss!'

She laughed. 'Poor Ken.'

***

TE KOHUNA SITS at the edge of the Mangatiki Plain. To
the east is pretty gentle country rolling away beyond the river
to Basingstoke. There is a fair bit of dairying down that way;
these days, that's where the money is. To the west is a range
of hills. They rise up easy at first but then they get steeper
and seriously rugged. It rains a lot up there and there's always
seems to be cloud or mist hanging round the tops. From the
township there are three roads or valleys running back into
the rough stuff.

To the north, only a couple of hundred metres from the
service station, is Pakenga Valley Road. Monty Praguer and
the Vields had farms up that way, the one running beef, the
other sheep, but beyond that the country gets rough and the
road twists about like a corkscrew. There used to be another
farm further up but it was abandoned years ago and the bush
has taken over, like it does.

The second road west is Maungaiti. It runs through land
that's too rugged for farming and there's not much use for the
road except to get up to Lake Nihonui. Not many people go
up there. Just a few sightseers and the trampers and hunters.
There are ducks on the lake, and the country round it is good
for deer and pigs. It's a spooky kind of place, though. The local
Maori have a legend about Nihonui-te-toto, a taniwha that
lives in the lake and eats people, especially on certain days of
the year, when they say the water turns to blood.

The third road out of Te Kohuna, at the south end of the
town, runs into Tacketts Valley. It rises in three big steps up
towards the southern side of the lake, although it doesn't
make it that far. Our family farm is in the middle stretch.
It is around 450 hectares, running back from the Ukunui
Stream to the hills in the south. Grandad McUrran bought it
from the Tacketts in the mid thirties, a fact that the Tacketts
wouldn't let go of. There had always been bad blood between
the two families. 'History', as Ma called it. We had 5000 head
of sheep, mostly Romneys, and by then my older brother, Bill,
pretty much ran the place, even though the Old Man was
still meant to be in charge. But he was sixty-four and slowing
down, even if he pretended not.

He and Ma live in the house Grandad McUrran had built
down by the road. It's twenty minutes' drive from Te Kohuna,
and Gith and I used to go up there every week or so. Now
and again we'd drive further up to Bill and Leece's place on
the middle flat. They had three kids and Gith got on well with
them. She was such a favourite with Ma, though, that it was
hard to get past the old house.

It's a rambling weatherboard place made of heart totara
and it was added to over the years with the growing family. It's
warm and cosy enough, but the temperatures up the valley are
lower than down on the flat, and even on a summer evening
Ma likes to have a fire in the grate.

'How are you, Anna, love?' She always makes a point of
using Gith's real name. They wrapped each other up in a big
hug.

The Old Man was sitting in his armchair with his glass of
whisky. He had his right foot up on a stool.

'What's wrong with you, then?' I asked.

'Twisted his ankle, didn't he?' Ma said. Silly old bugger, she
might have added but she kept it to herself.

Gith bent over his chair and kissed him. He patted her
back with his free hand and caught my eye. He could see
what I was thinking.

'Don't you start!' he said.

'Bill was down here earlier.' Ma didn't need to say any more.
There would have been one of those talks about the Old Man
'not getting any younger'. I figured I was best out of it.

'He said he and Leece might drop by later,' Ma added.

'We can't stay that long,' I said. 'We . . .'

'I know, I know, I know.' She held up her hand to stop
me. 'But I've told you before. There's plenty of room. You can
always stay the night. Here. Or up the road.'

'We have a business to run,' I said. We often went over
this stuff. There were reasons why we couldn't stay the night.
I tried to tell her Gith wasn't happy sleeping anywhere other
than our place, which was part of the truth, but Ma wouldn't
listen. Once you are in the house she never wants you to leave.
I can never figure out if it's because she really likes us being
there or if she just needs us to smooth the rough edges off the
Old Man's company.

'You are staying to dinner though,' she said.

'Sure we are.'

We settled down then: Ma and the Old Man in their usual
chairs, Gith and I on the sofa. He let me have a glass of the
single malt. I guess he was feeling got at after his talk with
Bill and needed me on his side. Gith and Ma had a cup of
tea.

The story of Anneke Hesse had already got this far. Dolly
McKenzie had been on the phone to Ma with the news that
Hemi had been asking round town. I told them what we
knew, about the red Holden Commodore and the white van.
I could feel Gith getting tense.

'Just like that other time,' Ma said. 'Those poor girls. Dolly
says it's a serial killer.'

'They can't know that yet.'

'But two. It can't be a coincidence, can it?'

Gith twisted up a bit.

'Could be,' I said.

'You think so? Dolly said that Queenie in the Tearooms
asked Hemi if it was the same person and he was quite
evasive.'

Another twist. I reached out and put my hand on Gith's
arm to settle her down. Ma saw then.

'Anna,' she said, putting her tea on the table beside her
chair. 'You and I have something to do, eh?'

Gith looked at her.

'We've got to sort out that dress for Sunday week. What
do you reckon?'

'Gith,' she said.

'Come on then.'

The two of them went off together, leaving me and the Old
Man with our whisky. We were quiet for a while. I thought
about how much better we were getting on these days, since
I came back to Te Kohuna. Time was, when I was a kid, I
sometimes thought he hated me and I was scared shitless of
him. I guess he'd mellowed a bit over the years, and I was now
big enough to stand up for myself.

'Bloody performance,' he said, after a while.

'What? Them dressing up for the show?'

'No, no, no. The cops. They'll be here. They'll be all over us
like fly strike.'

'Well,' I said, 'if the girl's dead, somebody did it and they
have to try and find out who it was.'

'You're one for the "killer in our midst" theory, then, are
you?'

'Don't know what to think. But he's got to be in somebody's
midst.'

'Hmmph. A white van, you reckon?' he said.

'That's what Gith says.'

'Next thing is, they'll be rounding up half the bloody
vehicles in the district, like they did last time. And then the
finger-pointing'll start. I guess they'll have a go at Moss Vield
again.'

'Why him?'

'They had him down on their list last time, eh. Took away
his bloody wagon for damn near a week and there were cops
up there poking around. Looking for graves or some bloody
thing.'

'And has he got a white van?'

'Wouldn't have thought so. Not much bloody use on a
farm, those things. He's probably still driving the same wagon.

Moss doesn't throw things away.'

'He is a weird bugger though,' I said.

'If they arrested all the weird buggers, there'd be more
people in jail than out.'

'Fair enough,' I said.

Moss wasn't a friend but the Old Man thought he was a
good bloke because he was hard and he ran a good farm. That
was the way with the Old Man. If you toughed things out
and you were good at your job, you were a good bloke; and if
you were a good bloke, you could do no wrong. It gave him
an odd picture of the world. Like the way he never had much
time for Monty Praguer. 'Too soft on his dogs,' was what the
Old Man said, and that seemed to be a sign of being sloppy
every which way.

I didn't remember the cops taking that much notice of
Moss Vield but I could see why people might have talked
about him. Moss lived with his old man and they were both
loners. They had nothing to do with anybody outside the
bare bones needed to get something done. I guess Moss was
about fifty. He was tall and thin with a flat voice that had as
much feeling as an idling engine. He never got angry, never
smiled or laughed, never made a move he didn't have to. He
was a bit like a robot, and it wasn't hard to see him killing
somebody with no more thought than he'd cut the throat of
a sick sheep. A picture of a knife and blood popped into my
mind. Lots of blood. It'd have to be like that though. You
wouldn't use a gun, would you? People might hear the shot
and report it.

'Here,' the Old Man held out his glass. 'Get me another.' I
took it from him. 'And have one yourself.'

'Thanks.'

The bottle of Islay malt was just about his only treat. He
kept it in the bottom cupboard of the dresser. I poured us one
each and fetched a jug of water to cut them.

We started to talk business then. He asked me how things
were going for Gith and me and he was pleased enough by
what I told him. Time was, he thought I was too dumb or too
lazy to run any kind of business, and I think he was surprised
that we'd made a fair fist of it. Pretty soon we were well into
the sort of talk he likes best — doing over the government and
the meat board, not to mention the regional council. Times
were tough in Te Kohuna. There was next to no dairying this
side of the highway, and the high dollar and the prices for meat
and wool exports meant that the hill farmers were feeling the
pinch. The Old Man was allowed his moan, I reckoned. He's
not that much of a whinger but he is what you'd call critical.
He has a lot of smarts and he makes good sense on a number
of things. If he has a fault it's that he thinks he knows best on
just about everything and it's usually safest to keep quiet, even
if you think different.

We'd been at it for about half an hour when the door
opened and Ma and Gith came in dressed up like a couple of
Victorian dames. They were both wearing white blouses, with
lots of lace at the cuff and collar, and long brown skirts. They
had black shawls round their shoulders and little caps like
drawstring bags on their heads. Gith looked happy as.

'Bloody hell!' the Old Man said. 'You two must be sisters!'

Ma gave a big grin and did a twirl. Gith followed her but
she put too much into it, lost her balance and had to grab the
arm of the sofa.

'Steady on,' he told her. 'You'll take off if you spin too
hard.'

'What do you think?' Ma asked. 'Will we do?'

'You'll fleece everything that's got a wallet,' he said.

The idea was a charity collection on Sunday week at the
Annual Show. It was being run by the local chapter of Rural
Women New Zealand, something my sister Joanne was mad
keen on. Joanne was the high-society branch of the family.
She was married to Oliver Marsden, who had just taken over
from his father at Totara Flat, down towards Basingstoke, the
biggest spread in the district. The two of them getting together
had been a bit of a surprise, especially to Oliver's family, but
they seemed to be doing okay. Joanne had become a lady
overnight but she still kept in touch with us, especially when
she wanted something. Like help with one of her charities.

After dinner Bill and Leece dropped by and we spent half
an hour with them. They didn't want to talk about Anneke
Hesse. Leece was worried about her Uncle Len. He and her
Aunt Kath lived near Gith and me in the house closest to
the service station. Len had been fighting cancer for a couple
of years and had taken a turn for the worse. I told Leece we
would drop in and see how he was doing.

It was getting late when we left. There were big pools of
shadow in the narrow parts of the valley, and the hills behind
us were black against a red band of sky. I didn't turn the lights
on because it's the headlights on the road that freak Gith out
the most. I could feel her curling up in the seat beside me. She
had her eyes closed tight. I didn't talk because I didn't want
her looking and seeing how dark it was getting.

We got home around eight-thirty. The daylight was gone.
I parked the car and we sat in silence for a few minutes. Gith
didn't move.

'Sorry,' I said.

She twisted suddenly in her seat and grabbed me, clung on
tight. I could feel her shaking.

'Tell you what,' I said, 'let's go for a little walk. Maybe we
can see the stars.'

Our place was the last building on the main road at the
northern end of town. Part of the ground, where the service
station and the workshop are, had been dug out from the
side of a knob of hill that was covered in bush. The house
is up there on the western edge of the trees. There is bush
on one side and a paddock on the other, where we ran a few
sheep. If we walked to the northwest, we quickly got below
a little ridge and away from both the road and the lights of
the town.

It was a clear, still night, the warmth of the day draining
slowly from the air. We walked with our arms round each
other, Gith with her face to the sky. She really likes the stars.
I figure she knows a lot more about them than I do. From
time to time she would stop, dragging on me and pointing up
with her free arm, and she'd come out with words — names,
I guess. I could only translate a few, like Southern Cross or
Orion's Belt. Her face was pale in the starlight, her cheeks
hollowed by a brush of shadow. I thought she was just about
the best-looking woman I had ever seen.

'Good, eh?' I said, not necessarily meaning the sky.

'Gith,' she said and smiled at me.

***

BY SUNDAY NIGHT Anneke Hesse was on the six o'clock
news and early the next morning the cops were in town in
force. They came up from Palmy in a fleet of cars. Hemi
brought a couple of them over. There was a bloke and a sheila,
the one in plain clothes, the other in uniform — Detective
Sergeant Jackson and Constable Jones. I called Gith out of
the workshop and we sat down in the back room. I made
them all a cup of tea.